Facebook to IPO

Social giant Facebook is set to file for an initial public offering in a deal which could value the company as much as $100 billion.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the SEC filing for a public offering of stock could come as early as Wednesday this week.

The offering is expected to raise around $10 billion which will be one of the world's largest and the largest of a US internet company. Far beyond Google's 2004 IPO which raised $1.67 billion, valuing the company at $27 billion.

Facebook has waited long than arch-rival Google to go public with the move taking place eight years after Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg and fellow students.

Despite the massive popularity of the web site, Facebook's revenue is just a fraction of Google's advertising business and now Google has introduce the firm's own social networking service Google Plus which has been controversially given a high ranking in the firm's ubiquitous search engine.